


songs for a heart still beating

by makokitten



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Hand Jobs, Kissing, M/M, Season/Series 02 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 00:33:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1490146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makokitten/pseuds/makokitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You feel sick when he touches you and sicker when he doesn’t.</p><p>Coda for "Su-zakana."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Also on [Tumblr](http://makokitten.tumblr.com/post/83215540767/).

* * *

            The voice that tells Jack Crawford what happened isn’t your voice, even though it comes from your mouth. It is unwavering and matter of fact. It tells the truth. It omits the worst of you. And through it all, Jack listens to your story intently, nodding along as if he trusts the voice that isn’t yours to be yours because it’s a voice that’s authoritative, and firm, and sure of itself. You are not so sure.

            The owner of the voice that comes from you stands to the side, hands folded, listening patiently. When you’re cleared to go, you climb into the passenger seat of his car. He opens the door for you, and closes it for you, and you are away from it all, away from all the almost-sins that you’ve committed. 

            The unbearable quiet of a snowy evening falls upon your shoulders with the weight of a thousand corpses, and you stare into the white-flecked darkness as if expecting to see your own reflection staring back, hollow-eyed.  His hands are on the steering wheel beside you and you wonder how they can be so steady in a world that’s constantly shaking itself to pieces.

            “Pull over,” you say, and this is the voice that’s yours: it nearly cracks on the second word, as the car’s tires crackle over the gravel and snow piled up on the side of the road.

            He turns in his seat to look at you with eyes that burn cold, alive and dead. “Do you feel ill?” he asks, and it’s an inquiry that comes not from a place of concern, but from a place of curiosity. He wants to know what to expect from you.

            You shake your head no even though you can’t honestly say because you barely know what to expect from yourself.  Your hands are balled into fists of iron, but your flesh is sweaty and weak.  He reaches across you, and the pads of his fingers are gentle against your clammy cheek as he pulls your head down onto his shoulder and hushes you with all the tenderness of someone who might actually care.

            Almost, almost, you try to tell him that you’re not saying anything that needs hushing, that you’re not having a fit, but then your mind goes quiet and still and you understand. You try to listen for his heartbeat through the layers of his clothing.  A heartbeat is a fragile thing, and you would relish his fragility, but you can’t hear it.  Somewhere far away, outside of the knot of muscle and bone that is you, you feel him smooth your curls away from your face and press his lips against your skin.

            When he asks, some time later, if you’re cold, you do not nod and you do not shake your head.  He shifts to the side, away, and you feel a pang in your stomach that has nothing and everything to do with sickness.  Then he removes his coat and leans you forward so he can place it around your body. You want to tell him that you’re already wearing a coat, but you’ve misplaced your voice, so you say nothing. Your head finds his shoulder again.

            If experience has taught you anything, it’s that the world contains a thousand thousand devils, and you have just now found the one that’s meant for you.  You have found your devil, and he opens doors for you, and kisses your forehead, and gives you his coat to wear, to keep you warm in the winter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also on [Tumblr](http://makokitten.tumblr.com/post/83306994551/).

* * *

            You want to see him impolite.

            He turns the key in the ignition, and the car’s engine rumbles back to life.  The car climbs back onto the road, wheels spinning for a moment in the snow, and for that brief moment you wonder if this is the way you’ll die.  They find purchase, and you move on from that moment, alive.  The windshield wipers bat snowflakes away outside and then it’s just the two of you, minds beating against each other in the stillness like hearts might if you were any other people in the world.

            He says: “I’ll drive you home.”

            You say: “No.”

            He says: “I have a guest room.”

            You say: “No.”

            “Will,” he says. You stop talking.

            You wish you could retreat inside your own head, but you don’t permit that from yourself when he’s around. So, you look. There are scars on his hands from where you nearly killed him and you are both drawn to and repulsed by them. You focus instead on the column of his neck, the part of it that’s visible above his folded shirt collar. You think of his skin cells, and the cells beneath, and how many of them die every microsecond. Apoptosis. It’s almost enough for you.

            People tend think of death as a one-time event, over and done, but it’s actually a very present-tense state of being: human beings, as organisms, constantly cycle through death and rebirth, and the oxygen they inhale gradually poisons their lungs. Any triumph in the revelation that Hannibal Lecter is human and slowly dying is tempered by the fact that you are human, too, and will be just as dead when all is said and done.

            You feel sick now, but don’t mention it. You don’t want to give him the opportunity to be kind to you again. Your mind slips and stumbles as it tries to find something to latch onto.

            “Someone should let out the dogs,” you hear yourself say.

            “I’ll call Alana Bloom,” he replies, eyes still on the road. You wonder what happens to him internally, if anything, when he says her name aloud. She deserves a reaction: pupil dilation, a rapid heartbeat, something. “I’ll tell her that a situation arose and you’re spending the night with me.” 

            “Ha.” You look out the window, sitting back in your chair, nearly slouching.  “She’ll like that.” She won’t. “Might even stop by to make sure you’re still breathing.” A certainty.

            “Does that threaten you?”

            You move to look back at him, but change your mind, and turn your head even further away.  It’s buzzing like a swarm of angry bees, throbbing like a horse put its hoof through your forehead. “We’re not playing therapy now, Doctor Lecter.”

            Be that as it may, when you at last arrive at his home, he leads you in your normal way as if you were here as a patient. You find yourself in his office, that two-tiered room you know so well, with its hardwood floors and bookshelves and your chair and his chair. Before he can sit you down and turn this into something you don’t want it to be, you catch his arm and make him stop moving. You’re still wearing his coat around your shoulders.

            “Will—”

            You don’t know if it’s the beginning of a statement or a question. “No,” you say. “You, no.”

            He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t ask anything else, so you don’t tell him anything at all. You seize his face and press it to yours, foreheads first. He strokes your hair like you’re a child who needs soothing, and you’re the one who kisses him.

            Attempted seduction in the second degree, that’s what this is. Does it count as premeditated if you’ve only been thinking about it on the car ride home? Does it count as something in your control if you’re not sure he hasn’t planted the seeds of suggestion? Is it still greedy if he reciprocates just as greedily, fitting his mouth to yours, drawing you in? His left hand burns against your lower back, his right still in your hair, tangling now in the curls at the nape of your neck that you can never quite manage to brush down. You wonder how many people have died in this room.

            He pulls back, and his eyes search yours. His hands are more delicate on your body than yours are on his, and when he speaks, it’s a kindness. “You are not in a position to consent, Will.” 

            Your laugh tastes bitter on your tongue. You wonder how it would taste on his. “How much does consent really mean to you?”

            He peels your hands off of him and steps back. You reel. You feel sick when he touches you and sicker when he doesn’t. He looks at you like you’ve misunderstood the kind of monster he is, and that makes you feel nothing at all.

            “You’re not well,” he says. “Let me fetch you a glass of water.” 

            You pace and pace, but pacing does nothing, so you let him have his way, at last, and sit down in your chair and wait. You rub your fingers back and forth over the fabric of the arms, so familiar and so alien. He returns, not with water, but with chloroform. You don’t resist, this time.

            “I’ll be nearby while you sleep,” he says as your vision goes dark from the edges in, as your limbs feel heavy and your head drops, “in case you have bad dreams.”

            That makes sense to you. You understand that. He is the nightmare that chases all others away.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also on [Tumblr](http://makokitten.tumblr.com/post/83475293733/).

* * *

            You awaken in a bed that isn’t yours, lying on your left side. For a second you think you must be dreaming, although you don’t know what quirk of the brain would put you in such a beautifully furnished room when most of your dreams involve crime scenes and corpses. You see no blood here, no visible trace of violence; the sheets are silken and smooth and clean. Outside the window, gleaming faintly through the curtains, there is snow, and sunlight.

            Those luxuries are for other people. His arm is draped around your waist, anchoring you down. You’re in your undershirt and boxer briefs and his torso is bare but you know, despite the relative lack of clothing, that you didn’t have sex with him. He only wanted you comfortable, so here you are: comfortable. Your head hurts, and your limbs are still leaden, but these things don’t bother you enough for you to do anything about them. You’re not sure you want to be poking around in his medicine cabinets, anyway.

            His voice, soft: “Your clothes are on the chair, if you want them.”

            You nearly crawl out of your skin. He hadn’t seemed awake. Looking over your shoulder at him feels like an impossible contortion, so your eyes find the chair, instead, and your clothes folded neatly in a pile, and your shoes, sticky with the blood of a dead horse, on the floor. You take a long, deep breath in. You want your clothes, but you don’t want to show weakness. “Later.”

            “All right,” he says. You wait. You want to hear him yawn, like a person would, and you are left unsatisfied. His voice is neither weary nor groggy with sleep. Perhaps he didn’t sleep last night. Perhaps he doesn’t sleep at all. “Alana did visit, briefly.”

            Even though you want to see the expression on his face, you stop yourself from turning around. You remember his hand in your hair, and the gentleness in his voice, and it’s enough to keep you in your place. “I hope I wasn’t undressed in your bedroom,” is all you can think to say.

            “Fully clothed,” he replies, “in the guestroom.” 

            You sigh, oddly quelled. “Then why am I undressed in your bedroom now?” 

            “I promised you I would be nearby while you slept,” he says, as if it’s the most reasonable thing in the world, “and I was.” You can’t counter that, so you just shift your almost-naked legs against his sheets, so much softer than yours, so alien. He asks, “Do you remember propositioning me yesterday?”

            This had to come, but you weren’t expecting it so soon, or put so bluntly. “Yes,” you say, tongue darting out between lips like sand, “But I didn’t want sex, I wanted—”

            “What did you want?”

            You swallow. “I wanted quiet, in my head. I wanted something other than the noise, the—what I was feeling then.”

            He considers your answer. You can envision him weighing it on the scales in his mind, but you do not turn to look. After years, he asks you, “Do you still want that?”

            “I’m not gay.”

            “I’m your psychiatrist. I hope I would know by now if you were.” He presses close against your back, settling in. “Desperate times do call for desperate measures.”

            That makes you laugh until you grit your teeth and hate yourself for it. You just nod. You nod, and he knows what you mean.

            He reaches across your body to push up your cotton undershirt, and you shiver when his hand brushes the skin of your lower belly. As he pushes your underwear down you try not to think about how his hands and arms were the last things that Beverly Katz felt in life. His fingers settle on your hipbone.

            “Not a conventional form of therapy,” you remark.

            He says your name like a caress, and it silences you.

            You know there’s still blood in your body because all of it rushes to his hand when he touches you, and you’re embarrassed at yourself, and angry at him, and relieved. The fingernails of your right hand scramble at the flesh of his forearm while his body warms yours from behind. You haven’t told him how long it’s been since anyone’s touched you like this because it hasn’t come up in any of your sessions. He can probably guess. He can probably smell it on your skin.

            You close your eyes, and then you’re extracted from your body, suspended above yourself, looking down. You’re surprised to see that he’s not smiling; you expected him to smile, but his mouth is set in a firm, straight line, in concentration. Somewhere in the tangle of sheets, his right calf drapes over your right shin. Right then, you are the center of his world. There is nothing else, and no one else. Your eyes move back and forth beneath your lids, eyelashes fluttering, as if you were lost in REM sleep, a dreamer.

            Then you’re reunited with yourself again, and your hips buck against his hand and the muscles in your buttocks clench and you make the sounds that a little boy would make trying to muffle his own tears. You gasp and whine and bite against the knuckles of your left fist until his voice, gentle in your ear, tells you that you don’t have to, and then something like a cry spills out from between your lips and stains his sheets and it’s over, it’s over, it’s over.

            On the outside, you feel his lips press against the back of your neck in a long, slow, unnervingly tender kiss. On the inside, you are so sweetly, blissfully empty.

            He removes his hand from you just before you reach down for it, and when he draws it back you don’t have to listen for the sound of him sucking on the tip of his index finger to know that’s what he’s doing. A question bubbles up out of that emptiness inside you, born from a place of darkness and curiosity. You ask him, “What do I taste like?”

            You feel him smile, then, because he presses his smile against the skin just below your ear, makes you feel it, feel all of him. He isn’t aroused. You wonder what it would take to arouse him. 

            He says, “You’re being funny, Will.”

            You wish you were. Oh, how you wish you were.


End file.
